Co-Infection by LF-89-Like and EM-90-Like Genogroups of Piscirickettsia Salmonis in Farmed Atlantic Salmon in Chile: Implications for Surveillance and Control of Piscirickettsiosis

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript covers an important issue and the authors have done well in investigating the molecular aspects of SRS in the included samples. As a pathologist and epidemiologist, there are some angles that I would like the authors to think about, especially since potential improvement of the surveillance/control program is mentioned as one goal. In addition, there are some things presented that needs to be more consistent, more elaborated on or just explained. I do believe however, that this will turn out to be a nice and important paper in the end.

 

The language needs to be simplified throughout the manuscript. Complex sentences (at least one sentence spans eight lines) makes the text hard to read and sometimes the authors lose the connection to what the start of the sentence implies. A maximum of two lines per sentence should be the guideline. Except for the complexity, the English is of good quality

Author Response

Reviewer 1: This manuscript covers an important issue and the authors have done well in investigating the molecular aspects of SRS in the included samples. As a pathologist and epidemiologist, there are some angles that I would like the authors to think about, especially since potential improvement of the surveillance/control program is mentioned as one goal. In addition, there are some things presented that needs to be more consistent, more elaborated on or just explained. I do believe however, that this will turn out to be a nice and important paper in the end.

Answer: Thank you very much for your comment. However, in order to be able to respond to your requirements in a concrete manner, we need you to be a little more specific about what you need us to discuss or elaborate on in the manuscript. Thank you again.

Reviewer 1: The language needs to be simplified throughout the manuscript. Complex sentences (at least one sentence spans eight lines) makes the text hard to read and sometimes the authors lose the connection to what the start of the sentence implies. A maximum of two lines per sentence should be the guideline. Except for the complexity, the English is of good quality

Answer: Thank you very much for your comment. However, in order to be able to respond to your requirements in a concrete manner, we need you to be a little more specific about, e.g., tell us the specific lines of the manuscript where we should evaluate possible editorial changes.

Reviewer 2 Report

Please see the attached PDF. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Line 24. Typo in “Genogroup”

A: OK, now it says: "genogroups"

Line 96-97. What do you exactly mean by early infection? An early time point of infection? Is there any particular reason for choosing early infection, rather than chronic infection or contrasting the spatio-temporal distribution changes caused by early VS chronic infection? Could you please elaborate on this?

A: It is important for us to promote the early detection or diagnosis of P. salmonis, especially at the genogroup level, because it has been widely demonstrated that the early initiation of treatment determines the final efficacy of the intervention. We are not interested in chronic infection because those fish are not even eating the medicated feed anymore. We are about promoting preventive health management and optimizing therapies to use fewer antibiotics to control SRS outbreaks.

Line 218-219. What do you mean by mean weight? The average weight of all the fish sampled from each site (n=9)? If yes, please add the standard deviation for fish mean weight. What is the point of adding mean weight instead of individual fish weight?

A: we refer to the average weight of fish in each site at the time of each sampling. In this case "mean" and "average" are synonyms; but we have now included "average" instead of "mean".

p.11, line 33. Where is the caption for figure 1? Or the title of figure would go as caption?

A: Surely the caption of the figure was missing when the editorial format was updated. We have included it and now it says: "Figure 1. The frequency of qPCR positive results for EM-90-like and LF-89-like (n=67 fish) at organs level."

Table 7: For the pathological scoring of liver nodules, better you provide pictures (at least as supplemental files). For instance, what are the attributes you are looking in a fish to say it has severe scoring for liver nodules - which will give a clearer representation of scoring rather than just numbers

A: We have don't included this information in this work.

p.13, line 66. Figure 2 caption?

A: Surely the caption of the figure was missing when the editorial format was updated. We have included it and now it says: "Figure 2. Comparative positivity rate for LF-89-like and EM-90-like genogroups of P. salmonis between 2017 and 2021 using genogroup-specific qPCR (n=363)."

p.15. line 155. How are the qPCR assays you employed for genogroup and P. salmonis detection different or special from the previously reported lab assays?

A: Our focus is not on PCR per se, it is that we should promote surveillance of P. salmonis at the genogroup level. For the reader, we leave the references (14) and (15) of the other described techniques to deepen if desired.

Lines 180-182 and lines 192-194. Repetition of same lines.

A: We have removed the text L180-L182.

Tables with percentages could be bit more informative. Because the percentages column-wise and row-wise seemed confusing at the first look. Please use proper table captions.

A: it is done

Tables 2-4: Please check the alignment or indents of the table. Indent settings make the table complicated (E.g., Table 3, Date column).

A: Ok. we assume that everything will be resolved with the publisher's work. It's a format that we don't define.